ENERGY

[A
transcription by Bob Hardy of the talk ‘Energy’, given by
Eugene Halliday at an IHS meeting sometime between the late 1950’s
and the early 1960’s, at the home of Ken and Barbara Ratcliffe
in Liverpool, UK. The original recording was restored and re-mastered
by Richard Milligan (Ken Ratcliffe’s son-in-law). Paragraph
numbers have been added by me as an aid to study – Bob Hardy]

.

1.
A statement was made last week concerning energy … most
people not having enough of it to equilibrate their three centres,
and having to rob the belly to pay the other two.

2.
What are the further implications of this?

3.
Is not energy, by definition, a resultant of food breakdown, and
therefore freely available to all? Yet people vary tremendously in
energy level.

4.
We will examine the statement, “Is not energy by definition a
resultant of food breakdown,” - but not within the meaning of
the term ‘energy’. But ‘energy’, by
definition is simply power, or force, in work.

5.
Remember this ‘erg’ is ‘work’. Energy is the
‘in-working’ affirmation; a force working inside. It does
not necessarily signify ‘food’ or ‘from food’,
it simply signifies that the force is working inside, a force working
inside. So that when a force goes round …closes itself, and
then carries on inside. Because it is inside, we call it ‘energy’.

6.
If we apply power on a point we will call it a ‘force’.

7.
We will use the word ‘power’ to signify all energies and
forces, without considering the particular mode of application. If we
consider the power to be applied to a body we will call it a ‘force’.
All change, we will say, is the product of the application of a force
in some situation. But once the power has gone inside the system and
is working within it, we then call it ‘energy’.

8.
So, it does not follow that energy, by definition, is a resultant of
food breakdown unless we define food in a very peculiar way.

9.
If we like to remember the two aspects of Absolute Power: A causal
aspect of it - the initiator of change; and the substantial aspect of
it, (although it is the same thing). There is no other substance than
power.

10.
When we consider the substantial aspect of it we could call that
‘absolute food’, if we wanted to. We would then mean that
‘to absorb’, ‘to assimilate absolutely’,
would be to take in food from the absolute level. This will tie up
with the later part of the question.

11.
So ‘energy’ just means that the power is to be
considered as working within a given finite structure. We can talk
about the energy inside the universe. We do not normally talk about
‘absolute energies’, because the Absolute has scrubbed
out the boundaries. The concept of ‘in’and
‘out’ is not normally applicable at the absolute level.

12.
Assuming for a moment that the energy we get comes from food in the
narrow sense, then it is not freely available to all in the same
quantities or in the same quality. We know for a fact that many
peoples on earth today - say in China and certain places - the amount
of food available is very small. They may get a handful of rice, and
consider themselves well-paid to do so for a day’s work.
Simultaneously, in another part of the globe, a man might be eating
large amounts of steak, and a variety of vegetables and so on, and
stuffing himself until he feels physically uncomfortable. So that in
fact, on the earth, the same amounts and qualities of food are not
available to all people. So that even if we took it that ‘energy
= food broken down’, yet there is not the same amount or
quality of food or quality available. (The
“(good) ‘Night’ here would almost certainly be
Shelagh Ratcliffe, Ken and Barbara’s daughter!)

13.
Now, people vary tremendously in energy level. We can see
immediately, that if we restrict food to the narrow sense, that we
would expect it to vary for two reasons. First of all, the quantities
and qualities of food (5.00)
taken
in by different individuals varies, and secondly, the state of their
body varies tremendously from person to person, and within any given
person from day to day, and even from moment to moment.

14.
If somebody upsets you, annoys you, irritates you, they interfere
with your digestive processes. Remember our very simple diagram of
our man as a tube, with a control factor on the tube - the nervous
system. … If we put matter into the top end of this tube, and
let it go down, there are certain processes which go on inside the
tube. It’s squirted upon with various fluids, acid and so on.
It is broken down and then assimilated through the walls.

15.
Now if you are in a certain state you cannot digest food, you cannot
break it down - ‘digest’ - you cannot analyse that earth.
That’s the ‘di’ – analysis, and the ‘ge’
- earth. ‘To digest’ is ‘to analyse the earth, and
break it down into its constituent forces’.

16.
If you get tremendously upset you find your stomach will contract
and you may over-secrete or under-secrete. And then, after a time,
this may be forced out of the stomach, through your duodenum, along
the tube, until finally, it may be excreted, without having been
adequately digested.

17.
You know this can occur when a tremendous fright hits a human being
or an animal. A tremendous fright can actually cause immediate
diarrhoea, in which the whole of the intestine will be emptied,
really as an unconscious preparation for flight, without carrying
unnecessary loads - and a very amusing sight it is too!

18.
When it occurs, really the matter taken in there has been broken
down prematurely, reduced to a fluid, and expelled without taking it
to its proper conclusion. So that, there again, we see that the same
person can take a certain amount of food of a certain quality, and
yet fail to get out of it what he got out of it under other
conditions.

19.
So again, the energy level will vary from person to person. It varies
every time your mood varies. You know that your feeling,
particularly, influences your glandular activities, and this acts
directly on centres in the body and it alters your metabolism. And
this may, in effect, make it quite impossible for you to get what is
called the ‘benefit’ out of your food.

20.
Some people have tremendous appetites and stay thin. Some people
don’t eat much at all and cannot reduce weight. They are
obviously getting energy sources those who are not reducing the
weight) from somewhere and storing then up. Whilst the others, who
are getting large amounts of food and not putting on weight, are
either not getting it out of the food - they are just letting it pass
through without breaking it down properly – or, if they are
breaking it down and getting the energy, they are dispersing it as
fast as they get it.

21.
Let’s have a look at the second way of getting rid of it. In a
three part being you have urges, you have feelings, and you have
ideas, and if you are lucky you have co-ordination.

22.
Supposing we break down a given amount of food ‘X’. It
has gone through the mouth, down the tube into the stomach and is
ready. Now, supposing we start energy expenditure. If we like we can
go run round the houses very fast for several hours, and in so doing
we are using up some of the energy. Also if we indulge ourselves in a
sport like swimming or even in sexual activities, we get rid of
tremendous amounts of energy. We can, if we try hard, get rid of them
quicker than we can take them out of the food. And this way we can
keep our weight down. So we would expect a person extraverted and
tremendously interested in energy expenditure, to keep the body down
to its minimum weight and to have no superfluous fat on it.

23.
But supposing a person has a good digestion and does not waste
energy or expend energy faster than he takes it in, (10.00)
it
will begin to deposit on him layers of tissue and he will get
progressively fatter. All this fat can be broken down, and re-used in
an emergency, as energy. In the same way that by muscle expenditure
and sexual activities and so on, you can get rid of the energy, you
can get rid of energy by emotional displays.

24.
You can get rid of energy very quickly by liking and disliking.
Strong likes and strong dislikes will cause energy to go out.

25.
You might have noticed the way boy pussycats will lose weight
rapidly during the courting season, and you will find a similar thing
goes on with young lovers in the human order. If the young boy gets
his eye on a girl he will probably lose weight. And he is losing it
because he is indulging in tremendous bursts of emotionalism.
Remember ‘energy’ is the name we use for ‘force
involved in a structure working’, but in ‘E-motion’
we are concerned with out-motion, the ‘e’ is ‘ex’.
So ‘emotion’ means ‘out-motion’. And when we
are talking about forces and power and so on, we are talking about
motion.

26.
If I wave my hand, I raise its temperature, and in so doing I start
warming the atmosphere round it. So I am using energy - that is power
working my hand - by changing its form into radiation, through heat.
When I am waving my hand a certain centre in my brain is also going
up in temperature. This is quite easily measurable. So that if I am
using any part of my body, I am radiating heat from it, and that is
motion, and I am feeling an out-going tendency.

27.
The psychological aspect that we call emotion is merely the
corresponding psychic aspect of out-motion of force, which appears as
radiation of heat, and so on. This I can do by very violent
dislikings. Envy can cut fat down on a body very, very quickly. Any
kind of emotional outgoing can take this tissue which is really, the
energy level (as substance aspect) of power.

28.
Likewise, when I go into the head, I can expend energy by thinking.
If I think very, very, hard on one particular subject, I raise the
temperature of my brain in that place. As a matter of fact, if you
think very, very, hard about certain things, and with sensitive
thermometers on the scalp, you can measure the rise of temperature in
the head in the corresponding part where you are doing your thinking.
This means that you are actually radiating, again, forces through the
thinking process. Anybody who has seen the rate of loss of weight
that can occur on a psychopath in a mental hospital will understand
that one of the quickest ways of losing weight is through excessive
mental activity.

29.
The funny thing about the mind is this. It can take a little thing
like a pain (which to an animal would simply be a pain and that would
be the end of it) and it can, by reconsidering it and reflecting upon
it and adding to it the concept of injustice - it can magnify this
pain beyond all proportions. And it can persuade the whole vehicle to
respond to an original pain as if it were a million times bigger than
it is. And in so doing, to make the whole organism react in an
attempt to fly away from this pain - this magnified pain.

30.
Tolstoy was aware of this when he said that the animals feel pain
but they do not suffer. He meant by ‘do not suffer’ in
the sense that human beings do.

31.
Human beings, with the aid of the concept of injustice, can elevate
a little stamp on the toe (an accidental stamp on the toe) into a
violent threat against one’s whole existence. “You did it
on purpose. I know what you are feeling about me, you always have,
your mother did,” and so on. Now this is magnifying the bang on
the toe, and at the same time using up tissue in the process. And if
you have a sufficient number of in-laws to do it on, you can cut down
many pounds in one day.

32.
This process of ex-moting - sending motion out of the body from the
three levels - will cut down quite easily on tissue size. (15.00)

33.
One of the best things to do for a woman who wants to reduce her
figure, is to start worrying like mad. Generally people who get
weight on, get it on because they are not worrying enough. And the
precondition for them reducing their weight is to start worrying.
Sometimes you can get them to do it by worrying because they are too
fat and if you can manage to worry them enough, they go down again.
As soon as they’ve gone down, temperamentally they will be
satisfied they are down and start putting it on again. So, it is a
losing battle.

34.
Now … the third part says, “As energy can only be a
modification of spirit, why cannot unlimited quantity be obtained by
conjuring such energies from one’s own centre?”

35.
Well, it is “why can one not?” One can, providing you
define which ‘one’.

36.
In the centre of every being there is an ‘infinite supply’.
That is the vibrating with the same as the absolute, and it will
supply you with infinite energy, providing you let it. The thing that
stops it is quite simple - a contingent relation with another being,
focused on, not from the level of the immanent spirit, but from the
‘turba’ - the turbulating action-band of the being.

37.
Now the more the mind races, the more energy you expend, and the
more food you need to replace the tissue you are losing. And the mind
races when you identify with serial thought processes. So that
whatever comes from your centre and tries to express itself, if you
immediately inside begin to doubt it and try to stop it - to distrust
it, or to think it will get you in trouble with the police or any
social institution - as soon as you do that you curl it inside, and
instead of it going out and expressing itself - which is opening a
door, through which more will come - it just goes inside the being
and serialises itself in thought processes and then gets very, very,
hot and radiates and wastes the energy that could have done
something.

38.
There is actually an infinite supply and the substantial aspect of
that is the ‘Bread of Heaven’ that you read about in the
‘funny books’. There was a wonderful remark by a priest
the other night, who was asked, “What is the effect of
conversion to Christianity suddenly? Does it really modify your life
and make you into a new man?” And this priest replied, “Well,
it is said that Christ is the Bread of Heaven, but surely one cannot
expect that one loaf will make much difference.” I suppose he
got ticked of for that.

39.
Now this bread … You remember from our presentation before,
the word ‘read’ is in it - ‘a house in which you
read’. If you read - that is, if you differentiate your field
of energy to its limit - then you are getting that bread. Every day
you should know something new. If you are knowing something new, you
are breaking new ground. You are continuously breaking the bread and
celebrating that famous mnemonic device. Not to read something new
into your experience every day is not to partake of that bread.

40.
There is an infinite power substance. The substantial aspect of that
power is called the Bread of Heaven’, and Heaven consists in
power equilibrated. So it means that every being whatever is in
immediate contact with an infinite supply of energy, but in order to
get it they must demand it, humorously called, ‘Claiming the
Promise’.

41.
If you don’t actually demand it you, are inhibiting its
natural flow. There is the infinite supply in the middle, it is
coming out. It wants to express itself. It wants to produce something
new. “Behold I make all things new”. If it makes
something new (‘Behold! I make all things new.) the moment you
see it you become interested, and in that interest you draw from
centre more of this energy. And as long as you are interested and
reading something new, further energies come, and they will come as
long as you can retain your interest. (15.00)
So
that really, if you become very interested in a subject matter, even
if it is very, very late at night, you will find that you can go on.
Sometimes, surprisingly, for a very, very, long time and then you
wonder in the following morning what it was that kept you awake so
long. The fact is that if you are interested and discovering new
things you are drawing on the infinite supply of energy.

42.
And if you can’t find something new in which you can interest
yourself, then you shut down on this energy because that energy won’t
come through unless you open a door. When it says that, “Behold
I stand at the door (there’s a circ… in the door here),
and knock. If any man will come in to me I will sup with him”.

43.
You must make a demand on it. This is again the parable of the
talents. You have a talent. Your talent may be only one inch big. If
you develop it, it will become and inch and a half. You must find an
interest, you must find the direction of your process of
enlightenment, and progressively each day, each hour, find something
new. And as long as you find something new, interesting, in the line
of your development - better not trivialities, better new principles
- you are drawing on that infinite energy.

44.
That
is, shortly, a reply to the last one.

45.
(Question
from group)May
I ask you about the term ‘limit’ which you applied to the
‘D’ at the end of ‘bread’? …Yes
…You
referred to it as ‘limit’.
…Yes …
I don’t follow this.

46.
Well ….Remember the origin of our letter ‘D’ it
is a half circle. And we take this half of a circle, and when you
pronounce the letter ‘D’, you actually pronounce it by
pressing your tongue firmly against a part of your palate, for the
letter ‘D’. And it signifies both a limit and a door. In
the Hebrew, the ‘daleth’ itself, means ‘a door’.

47.
So
Christ would pun and say, “I am daleth”, I am the letter
‘D’, “I am the door,” because ‘D’
is the principle of D-vision, ‘vision of D’, the
analytical possibilities. But, wherever you do analyse, you have
divided the total being and in so doing have discovered a new limit.
So that in every analytical process you are discovering limits.

48.
You
remember in the Tao Te Ching, it tells you about a butcher who had an
axe that remained very, very sharp. And the prince was very surprised
because he never sharpened it, and it was very, very sharp, and he
had been chopping for twenty years. The prince says, “How do
you keep it so sharp without a stone?” And he said, “Well,
I always look for the natural divisions. I use the thin end to cut
through the flesh and I feel for the joint. So, I never cut through a
bone, I always look for the natural division.”

49.
Now if you look for the natural divisions, you are looking for,
really, functional divisions. Let’s draw an example. Supposing
we take a bone, there’s a bone - the humerus - and there are a
couple of bones down here, the radius and the ulna. Then your hand
comes. Now if you get a sharp knife, you can insert the knife in
here, and you will find some ligatures, tendonous material, and you
can cut that quite easily, and you can cut round here and then quite
suddenly the arm will fall in two. And your knife will not be blunt.

50.
But another way of analysing is just to get a chopper and say “I’ll
analyse this bone by chopping through it.” This mode of
analysis by chopping through a limb was anciently, practised very,
very often. It does tell you something, it tells you cross-sections.
I’ve got a nice photograph of a cross-section of a greyhound
that was made by freezing a greyhound and then sawing it in two. It
actually gives the cross-section of the organs, at the level of the
saw cut, in perfect shape, so it does give information. That was THE
method a long time ago.

51.
There is another method of analysis using a hammer, but it tends to
destroy the finer structures within. You can’t really study
some of the better functions with a hammer. You may remember that
Nietzsche, in philosophy, said, “I will philosophise with a
hammer.” And he meant to say that he would smash to fundamental
elements, the philosophy that had preceded him. (25.00)
He
was not going to be dictated to by configurations of thought that had
been piled one on top of the other, all of them determined by a
concept, which to him, was essentially erroneous.

52.
Supposing we take the Parmenidian concept of the universe. According
to Parmenides, the universe was a sphere, solid and having no space
in it, and therefore incapable of motion, and therefore everything
must remain as it is. And it was a finite sphere. It was fabricated
by a mind that wanted things to remain exactly as they were. It was
in absolute antithesis to the Heraclitean concept that all is fire,
all is dialectical energy, creating forms, and dissolving them again
- the doctrine of eternal flux. These two concepts were opposite. But
the Heraclitean one did not survive socially, because it is
anti-social. It is not a comfortable idea to think that your most
treasured structures are shortly going to be burned, and that it
doesn’t matter if they are. So all the security-lovers plumbed
for the Parmenidean Sphere. But there are also some others fighting
against them and these two concepts of the free flux of energy and
the static universe of form, fought over the years, and finally
Nieztsche got fed up with it and started philosophising with a
hammer, and he smashed this sphere to bits. He was not trying to
preserve anything, and he smashed every concept that he could find in
a work called the ‘Umwertung alle Wert’, which means
‘whatever it is, say the opposite and you might come
essential’.

53.
Now if you smash them all down you come back to a primary fact of a
flux of experience which you can call ‘life’. He is one
of the ‘life philosophers,’ and he observed that, in the
human economy, the impulse appears as ‘Will’. And that
this ‘Will’ had a very peculiar function, because it was
a thing that could refute itself and yet remain itself. It was a
thing that was power, and that this power formulated itself. This
translating thing could turn round, and having turned round and built
a form within it, it could then break it up in bits and go on again.
And he saw that this Parmenidean sphere and this Heraclitean flux of
energy could be asserted simultaneously in the formula, ‘This
is life’.

54.
Every structure then made, was made for a time, for a purpose, and
as soon as it had been realised, it was time to smash it up. And it
was a product of ‘Will’, and the ‘Will’ made
the form, and then the ‘Will’ smashed it up, because it
had seen through its relations internally. In other words, it had
exhausted its interest. And when the interest was exhausted, it could
no longer call upon the Immanent Spirit, because it had lost
interest. So the message that ‘Smash it up’ could go on
again. And the ‘smashing up and going on’ is
‘transcendence’.

55.
Now the ‘Will’ is the only thing that can come in
freely, bind itself, then smash up its own created bondage, and then
transcend itself again.

56.
And he then brought up the concept of life to include the idea of a
will that precipitates objects and breaks them and transcends them.
The ‘Will’ is a peculiar kind of sentient power which is
continuously transcending its own creations. And he saw this as an
eternal thing and his doctrine of ‘the eternal recurrence’
springs out of this.

57.
He said, if you make a perfect form, you have made merely a
geometrical structure and you will understand that you have made it.
At some point in time you must exhaust it because it is finite,
because it is made. Therefore, even though it is perfect, it becomes
for you valueless, because you know what is in it. It is not new to
you any more. It then becomes time to break it. You break it, and
release the energy that was in it, and that same energy - that
involved will - now evolved, transcends the formula, regains its
freedom and courses on.

58.
This requires a readiness never to rest eternally. You can rest
temporarily and finitely, but only to get your breath back for
another go. Simply, we could graph it. There are two ways of moving,
(30.00)
the
‘translation’ and the ‘rotation’. There is
your structure in the rotation, and there’s the translation
which is free. That is free and that is domed. Both together are
freedom. If you have freedom, you have so much free energy and so
much domed energy; and the domed energy is what you call your ‘mass
inertic body’.

59.
‘Mass inertia’ is force establishing itself by rotating.
So a man of freedom is a man who is free and bound, and he is bound
freely. It is his free decision to bind himself for a time, before he
goes out again in another translation.

60.
Now how do we line this up with our own diagram of the vibrations of
the Absolute as circles?

61.
We have said we can cover the paper complete with circles, and this
completely covered paper would have circles, each one of which was
initiated as a ripple from a centre. Now at every centre there is an
intersection of ripples and each intersection is the creation of a
point of reference. So, we can draw ourselves a little ‘i’
at every section point.

62.
At every section point there is a little reference which makes an
observer. If we like to cover the whole paper with circles and make
the intersection points into little observers, we can do. And when we
do this, we can look from inside any given system with a narrow angle
of vision, to the limit. And when we do, the force we see is a
translation. But, if we get another observer outside the system over
here, he still belongs in another circle, because of the paper. He,
by his angle of vision and his increased distance, can accomplish the
whole orbit of the ripple system, and so for him that is not a
translating energy, it is a rotating energy, and as such is a body.

63.
Now this solves the problem of the translation of force into matter.
It solves the problem of how does force become matter and how does
matter become force, by saying they don’t.

64.
But if you view from inside the system with a narrow angle of
vision, you will think that you are seeing radiating or translating
energies. But if you get to a certain distance and look at it you
will think you are seeing matter. Thus, if we get a photograph of the
Andromeda Nebula in the sky, from our distance we can call it ‘a
mass of incandescent gases’ and so on. But if we were to
precipitate ourselves inside it and look at it, you wouldn’t be
able to see its edges, and to us it would be a highly complex …
complex … complex behaviour of radiating forces.

65.
So in the same way, if we want to puzzle somebody, we should get
them to take up a position inside the system so that all the forces
will be of too wide an arc to be accomplished. And if we want them to
understand it, we should get them to go to a sufficient distance so
that they can comprehend (and no doubt …(?)..) the object
presented. It is all a question of whether we look at it from inside
the system or from outside.

66.
Imagine a surgeon with a body on the table in front of him. He looks
upon it as an object. He has got his knives ready, the anaesthetist
is there, and he can cut. He can see from outside the system, and
because he is outside he can behave objectively. Meanwhile the
anaesthetic has not taken, the anaesthetist has got his foot on the
pipe and the poor subject on the table is on the inside of the system
and is very, very, subjective, not objective. So you can see in this,
that the way to conquer certain states is by deliberate
objectification.

67.
Let us have a look at the general concept now, of a very old Indian
idea which said, “Once upon a time god was on in his own and
there was none other. And while he was on his own he suddenly became
very anxious. (35.00)
And in this anxiety which he had, he saw a way of conquering the
anxiety. He said, “I am alone, therefore I must make something
for myself.”

68.
Remember this ‘make’ root again means your substance has
to be locked, which means quite simply you have to rotate some
forces, and these forces viewed from an appropriate distance will
constitute an object.

69.
And it says, “God so loved the world, that He gave His Son”.
Why did God love the world if God, in His infinity, was perfect? Why
should he bother to make a world if He was already perfect? Well, the
expression “If He was (past tense) already perfect,” is
really the application of temporal concepts to something that is
non-temporal.

70.
Factually we have never seen an object yet that does not exist
inside space. And the space itself, as we have said before, like
vacuum and emptiness and void, means ‘power considered to be at
leisure’.

71.
Imagine this paper to represent the Absolute, and the paper
vibrates. It isn’t circulating yet, it is just vibrating. This
is this top-level vibration, and it is infinitely propagated because
it isn’t rotating. And this infinite propagation is like a
shimmer or tremor through the Absolute.

72.
Now this tremor through the Absolute is ‘primary anxiety’.
So we will see the meaning of the existentialist position in this.
That anxiety is something we cannot get rid of, we have to accept it.

73.
Anxiety is the primary tremor of the Absolute. Now what to do with
it?

74.
Well if we look at people in a pathological state of anxiety, we
find that they are always trying to find a cause for this anxiety.
That is, they are blaming something for it. And to blame something is
to focus, to objectify.

75.
Now we say that anxiety is objectless - but fear has an object. The
difference between anxiety and fear is simply that anxiety does not
define its cause, but fear does define its cause as an object. And we
find that, in order to stabilise themselves, people in anxiety states
try to find something to blame for their state. And this itself,
which is generally considered medically to be a bad thing, or
naughtiness, on the part of the patient, is really a self-defence and
a life necessity.

76.
When the Absolute Anxiety experienced itself, it then set up an
object to fear. Remember ‘fear’ and ‘p-r’ are
the same word. This ‘pi-rational function’, reason
itself, is a function of fear, and reason is the same thing as formal
awareness. So that fear is the mode of conquering objectless anxiety
by setting up an object. And the object set up can then be
rationalised.

77.
Now as soon as you can make an object within your psychic state,
which would have been prior to the object anxiety, you have reduced
anxiety down to a focal point where it becomes fear, and in the act
of becoming fear, it has created an object. Now that object can be
attacked. It can be attacked by rational processes, it can be
attacked by energy, and it is a focus for consciousness.

78.
Consciousness can stand upon it and attack the object. When it
attacks the object and penetrates into it, as it penetrates into the
meaning of the object, it assimilates the object into itself.

79.
Now, the object is to become food for thought, and every object that
has been precipitated by fear out of a previous objectless-anxiety,
being subject to rational attack and force attack, is a mode of
focusing the consciousness and solving the Absolute anxiety by
precipitating an object of fear.

80.
In the attack on the feared object is the process of the world.
Every individual (40.00)
is backed by Absolute anxiety and has objectified some of it as fear,
and in this process of objectification has saved itself from absolute
annihilation by substituting, for the absolute threat of annihilation
(anxiety), a particular threat against his physical existence. This
allows him to focus on his objective body, to analyse its structure,
and at each point where he discovers something new, he grows in
security.

81.
Now you know that the universe is expanding, and the universe, the
world that God made, He loved, because it constituted an object for
Him.

82.
And into the universe comes the Absolute Energy through its internal
supply, spreads out, pushes against the limiting factor - the rib -
and expands the universe. Thus the objective universe is growing at
the expense of infinite space. And in so doing an object is presented
which enables objectless anxiety to be converted into objective fear,
and this fear to constitute reason, and the totality of this reason
to constitute the Logos, the ‘Word’ of the Gospel of
John.

83.
So God has solved this peculiar problem of absolute anxiety by
objectifying the world and then inserting His energy inside it,
progressively to analyse it, to penetrate it, to understand it, and
then to assimilate it. And in so doing, in the act of analysis, He
rescues Himself from the objectless anxiety.

84.
You remember, when we were dealing with an ancient Hebrew myth about
the Edom-itish Kings. We said that before the world was made, there
were some kings and they were called Edom, and the particular letter
in the Hebrew used here signifies that we are not going to do that.
Edom means ‘we are not going to dome, we refuse to objectify’.
And they made continuous fantastic structures which melted as soon as
they were made, and that is fantasy.

85.
And in that fantasy is the Absolute Anxiety - it is chaos. To defeat
this Absolute anxiety, this substratum of the being itself, we
compress it down, drive it into a centre and make it into an object,
and then rationalise it and then precede to assimilate the meaning of
it. It then has become the original one meat ball that was made, the
‘me-at’ - the objectified observer, and in the creation
of this objective world was the possibility of self-understanding for
the Absolute.

86.
Remember the Absolute Power translating infinitely could never
reflect upon itself. Reflection implies turning back, and turning
here creates an object. So, in the act of turning upon itself, again
Nietzsche points this out and says, behold every spirit and power
strives to turn back on itself. to catch itself. Because in so doing
it becomes objective, and in becoming objective, it becomes clear and
sees what it is, and penetrating through its form, in its vision, it
conquers the undefinable.

87.
Remember what we said about human beings magnifying pains and by a
process of self-pity, envy and, a variety of other deadlies thrown
in, it manages to reflect pain over and over and over again, until it
grows beyond all proportions and may destroy the objective state of
the being.

88.
If we confine ourself to objective fact, that does not mean gross
material fact only, it means to any clearly definable fact, in the
act of that clear definition we transcend it.

89.
Remember that when the will comes in and makes a zone of activity
and binds it and works within it, when it has finished working within
it, so that it has carved a part - D-vided, seen the differences
within - when it has finished that, that is the ‘consummation
of days’ and that particular sphere has fulfilled its purpose.
(45.10)
… … …

90.
(45.20)
The
being has now gained reflexive, self-conscious, objective, awareness.
Remember the oriental saying that the supreme object is the same for
all sages, because the supreme object that they all see is the same
object. What they are seeing is the ‘Will’, which has
turned in, created a sphere of being, domed itself, and then gone
inside its own being, and carved its own being into little bits. And
in making it into those little bits it has ‘chambered itself’,
(“In my Father’s house there are many mansions,”)
and in each chamber it has a particular function.

91.
When all the functions are analysed out it knows itself, and when it
knows itself totally, then its work is finished. It has gained an
objective reference, and this objective reference frees it from the
objectless anxiety of the infinite. Yet this object itself, which has
been created is food, precipitated by the eater - the riddle of
Samson, ‘Out of the eater, (that is the Absolute itself) came
forth the meat-ball’, the objective world.

92.
Then the energy penetrates into the meat-ball and divides it up and
then assimilates it and then disperses it again … and
disperses it into the eater. It has now assimilated the meaning of
objectification.

93.
Now it knows how to conquer fear and anxiety, namely by
objectification. Once it has completed the objectifying process, and
then dissolved the object actively instead of negatively, it then
stands not in the object, but in its own will.

94.
And this is what Nieztsche meant here. If you know that you can make
and break objects eternally, instead of being dependent on the
object, you become dependent on yourself, your ‘essence-will’.
This essential will can make and break objects eternally. But the
object itself is only the will objectifying itself, and there is
nothing in the object to stand upon, other than the will behaving
objectively. So it is the will, upon which you stand.

95.
If we now look at the three-part man again, we will see that we
start off with a field, we will centre that in the heart. And this
field splits into three functions, one of them specialises in the
retention of the field awareness, the other one mobilises the field
and becomes volition, the other one rises and becomes idea.

96.
Now the ‘idea’ is simply the ‘objectified will’.
But the will-centre is the energy that diffuses to objectify itself,
because it want to push around the objects. It is free energy left
over for pushing about the objects that it is going to make.

97.
The whole field awareness of this being there includes the awareness
that it is a field of power, that this power can concentrate within
itself on centres, and that it can, when concentrating, either
initiate changes - go in new directions - or it can compress itself
into forms, which it retains.

98.
Once it understands this threefold process in itself and sees it as
a field behaviour. Knowing that the field is infinite, the individual
can identify himself with the Absolute, (with the paper). Then, all
motions of the paper are felt coming through the centre of the field
of this being and they are taken in, assimilated and pushed to the
perimeter and the being expands in authority, and so on.\

99.
Now is there anything specifically we want to clear up about this? …
Or shall we go on?

100.
(Question
from the group) Is the field energy transformed for use in the
different centres,(50.00)
or is it the same energy that is used by the thinking process and the
‘urgeful’ process?

101.
It’s the same energy using the word ‘same’ in its
proper significance. This ‘same’, you could read that as
a German word if you like, ‘selb’ means seed, it means
the source. It means spiritual activity substantialising the field.
That is the non-different source of all. So it is the same and yet,
it is different. Because although it has got one source, it
D-ferentiates itself. It does different things in different places
and it does it simply by setting up a series of resistances.

102.
Supposing we set up two walls in the bath at a two feet distance. We
drop a pebble in the bath here, and the ripples go out in both
directions and hit the walls and then return to centre. They take a
certain length of time and they travel a certain distance, so they
have a wavelength and a frequency. Now supposing we put these
barriers a little nearer, so that when the pebble is dropped, the
wave goes out and hits the barriers and returns in only half the
time. Now the wavelength is only half as long as it was, and the
frequency is twice what it was. It is the same energy, but it is
functioning differently because we have set up different systems of
barriers.

103.
So, in the same way, inside the head, where we have a lot of
barriers specially set up for a certain purpose, we can knock up the
frequency, and at the same time decrease the wavelength, but it is
the same energy. Now according to the number of barriers we set up
inside, so we alter the frequency of the wavelength and the function
… which is always, fundamentally the same thing … which
is always spirit activating itself … substantiating itself
within that field.

104.
(Question
from the group) Are those barriers under our control at all?

105.
That is a matter of individual development. Some people can control
parts of them, some people can turn tears on at will - without an
emotion to go with them. Some people can demonstrate all kinds of
different functions of the body at will. This is always a matter of
individual development.

106.
We might assimilate modern existentialist philosophy here while we
are on this point of whether it can be done or not. The problem in
existentialist philosophy is stated shortly in this way. Does the
essence precede the existence or does the existence precede the
essence?

107.
If your essence precedes your existence, your character is eternally
fixed - you start fixed. But if your existence precedes your essence,
and your essence is going to be your essential character as you have
made it, you are already in existence, and you have to start with
you, as an existential individual.

108.
Now when we draw our diagram of the overlapping circles, we will
prove that both of these propositions are true and that modern
existentialism, like every other philosophy, is not the last word. It
is just a particular word that has been neglected before.

109.
It has been stated for a long time that there is control and that
these little circles inside here had better do as they are told. That
particular circle, the big circle which binds the others is just a
circle initiated from a centre, here. And each one of these is just
as valid a centre, as centre, as the big one. And further, if it
increases its beat-per-second which it can do because it is in the
Absolute substance, and is not other than it, then it can make its
own ripples spread out like this, and embrace the one that was trying
to embrace itself. But this depends on individual effort and
individual effort is a possibility.

110.
Now when the circles are drawn (we find this diagram over the
Vatican chairs very often you know) there’s the circle round it
to keep them in order. And this is already the imposition of a
concept of power and control by some individuals for their own ends.
They are pretending that a collectivity has a will of its own.
(55.00)
And that this collectivity is not the will of individuals pushing
other individuals about, but that the collectivity is a genuine
entity with authority over the individuals within that collectivity.
It is against this, that existentialism kicks. The Church, and some
other power organisations, have pretended that the individual has no
significance except within the collective. And that the collective,
in the fascist statement, is a genuine entity in its own right, with
authority and power to force the individual to obey.

111.
Now if you look at this diagram, we find that the circle that we
have drawn round it has not actually got a centre in the middle, but
it was a circle that we arbitrarily drew round three others. I’ll
put a dot in this one down here, to show that it might pretend that
it had a centre, but there was not really a center … but the
centre itself is a creation of these three, or these six that we make
…which in their overlappings and their apparent coincidence at
the perimeters, reflect motions that they have initiated back to a
centre.

112.
They create a centre by their collective individual behaviour. But
the centre has no authority over the individuals, other than the
authority vested in the centre by the individuals. So there is no
authority in a pope, or an archbishop, or a scientific dictator of
the coming century, other than that vested in him by the belief of
the individuals within the society of which he is a part.

113.
No dictator of a religious, philosophical, or a scientific order,
has any power or authority in himself over the others, other than
that which he can wield by duping them into coming off-center
themselves.

114.
Now, centrality is the essential part of the definition of an
individual self. If we haven’t got a centre we could not
initiate, and if we could not initiate we could not set up a
representative. But if we do set up a representative (like a
gentleman that could talk persuasively and nonsensically, like
Churchill during the war - “We will fight in the bathroom,”
or whatever it was), if we do set up such a man, his power is no more
than the power we ‘Will’ him to have because each one of
us wants to win.

115.
And the moment the situation has disappeared, evaporated … the
tension situation, the threat … then as individuals we don’t
need him. And at that moment we start thinking about something else,
and at that moment his apparent power dissipates. He tries valiantly
by much writing, and broadcasting, and popping, to remind us of the
debt, but there is no debt and he knows it. He was created by the
need under threat of many, many, many individuals, and he jumped on
the bandwagon of the moment.

116.
If we recognise then, that every circle in Infinity - in the
Absolute - is valid to itself. It exists before it has stressed
within itself, any particular character.

117.
Now if we say by this essence we mean its characteristic
differentiating form. That, by which know it to be different from
others. Then we could say that, if we want to posit a temporal order
- and this is arbitrary. We say, “Here is a given individual
and he is the same as another individual in eternity.” So they
exist, but they are not distinguishable. They are all circles
interacting, intersecting. You cann’t tell one from another. If
I cut these three out and then turn the paper round you can make any
one of them top - at will - by rotating the paper. They are all
circles and that is all there is to it.

118.
But in the time process, this existent will get itself an essential
character in the impact of the contingent relation. And this
essential character is being created after its existence is formed.
This is the existentialist position. So that any one of these
circles, if it has the energy to do so, (60.00)
like Kierkegaard had, it can rail against the Danish church. It can
rail against the misrepresentation of Christian pure individualism,
the right of the individual to be central to himself.

119.
If that existent being has gained the essential reflexive power then
it can rail against any forms that try to dominate it. It can rail
against social structures, philosophical concepts, religious ideas
and so on, simply because it has the power to do so, and this power
it has gained by continuously calling upon its inner resources.

120.
So, the growth of centrality is the same thing as the growth of the
awareness of the infinite supply, the infinite spirit within.

121.
To become aware of one’s centrality is to become superior to
the contingent stimulus. We take no notice of the stimulus if we know
that we too can initiate stimuli. Somebody is trying to knock us off
centre with the hidden persuaders penetrating our substance and we
are replying to the hidden persuaders by analysis. They present us
with an object, we analyse it and turn it into food. They are trying
to turn us into food.

122.
Now, we have said before there is a difference between ‘ego-ism’
and ‘ego-tism’. It is not often defined clearly in a
dictionary but some do. If we put the ‘t’ in it, it means
that the being is crucified in the concept of the ego. But if we take
the ‘t’ out, it is simply a statement that the ego exists
as a central being in its own right.

123.
Now let us look at the ‘conatus concept’. We call the
belly urge department, technically, ‘conation’ because of
the Latin, ‘conatus’, ‘cona(r)tus’ -
according to how posh you want to be. It means ‘a striving of a
being to be itself’, so that there is nothing in a being other
than his ‘conatus’. Whatever it is striving to be, that
it is, and it is nothing other than its striving to be. So that,
whatever it is peculiarly, is no more than its peculiar way of
striving to be. This resides in the belly.

124.
When Spinoza examined this term, he decided to define it as ‘this
striving of a thing to be what it is’ and he was then led,
quite philologically correctly, to the belief that a thing is no more
than its own conation. If you have the ‘conatus’ to
think, then you think; if you have it to feel, you feel; if you have
it to push blindly forward, then you push blindly forward. Whatever
you use your drive for, you will become that thing.

125.
There is no being other than the will to be; and there is no
specialised being, other than the will to specialise. And this
‘conatus’ is identical with the striving in an individual
to be individual. So it is the same as the individual ‘Will’
to be itself.

126.
Now, because this is an essential characteristic of the Absolute, it
is ‘absolutely justified’ for every being to strive to be
itself.

127.
And therefore, when we find two beings striving to be themselves,
part of their trying to be themselves is transcending the level they
are already at. And this attempt to transcend their present level
frequently results in a contingent stimulus. Now again, we must not
be abstract. At the existential level either of these stimulating the
other … either of them can react in a way determined by
itself. Though it is centrally established, it remembers the rule,
somebody is trying to stop my development. Some ‘body’ is
trying to stop my development. But I am not a body, I am an internal
spirit, I am the immanence, I am the infinite supply, so I am not
going to be stopped, I’m expanding.

128.
Now when he does this, he could drive the other being out of
existence, if the other being had not got his control concept. And
this ‘driving the other being out of existence’ is very,
very naughty - using the word ‘naughty’ technically
(65.00)
,
– ‘it brings the other being to naught’. This is
very irreligious. It is very unkind and because of this tendency of a
developing being to ride another being out of existence, then
‘ego-ism’ as a philosophy got into disrepute and was
called ‘ego-tism’.

129.
Now because this ‘ego-tism’ got into disrepute, the word
‘self’ got into disrepute, and to talk about
‘selfishness’, to say that a person is selfish, is a
terrible thing these days. And yet, as one philosopher pointed out,
if you have moral indignation, you have to be a ‘self’ to
have it. So there cannot be something fundamentally wrong with the
self.

130.
We can expand on the gross material level by smashing other gross
bodies out of existence. We can expand emotionally by not allowing
another person to express his emotions. We can expand rationally by
crushing another man’s ideas to the ground.

131.
It is quite easy to do it by superior force, either physical force,
emotional blackmail, or superior logic. But it is not nice, and it is
fundamentally stupid, for this reason. When a being is trying to
develop, it cannot understand itself unless it can find a resistance.
If it does not get a return force striking against its expanding
perimeter, it cannot reverberate inside itself, and this
reverberation is the object it contemplates.

132.
Every being, in order to develop, must exist inside an environment.
This environment is simply other beings trying to do the same.

133.
If any given being, under the belief that he was pursuing a power,
had sufficient power and cunning to destroy all other beings and did
so. At the moment of his success he would have defeated himself
because immediately he would have reached the term of his
development. Because he cannot develop further in the absence of the
external opposition. And for this reason and no other - purely as a
political utilitarianism - it is very stupid to eliminate the rest of
the beings in the universe.

134.
Therefore, when we come to test ourselves physically, we should test
ourselves against an opponent (this is the ground of sportsmanship),
in such a way that we do not completely destroy him. There is
something stupid in a boxing match if a man already beaten, and
through his ‘conatus’, his primary striving, is carrying
on fighting with both eyes closed, and he is just asking for a brain
haemorrhage.

135.
If the referee does not stop the fight, people get vexed, except one
or two ladies in the audience. But the fight should be stopped,
because once the point has been proved, it is stupid to go on further
and destroy unnecessarily the objective resistance needed to prove
yourself.

136.
In exactly the same way, in an emotional conflict, as soon as you
have shown yourself emotionally slightly better than the other
person, there is no necessity to go on and do the whole of
Shakespeare.

137.
In the same way, in the matter of logic, once the point is gained,
you can afford to drop it immediately. Whereas inertia tells you
physically to bash the man out of existence; to emote all over the
place so there is no room for him; and once you have gained the
logical victory, to write it down in your notebook and keep sending
it to him for a Christmas card every year.

138.
Remember, we cannot develop except in the presence of other beings,
and these beings are an absolute necessity of our next stage. If we
allow this then all enmity disappears.

139.
Let us look at Christ’s words in the light of this. He says,
“Love your enemies.” It sounds mad. If you think your
enemies are trying to eliminate you, you are not wrong. But that is
because they are ignorant, they do not understand that you are
necessary to their objectification. They are a bit confused. But if
you understand that they are absolutely necessary for your
development, you can afford to love them because they are the means -
and the only means - whereby you can become what you are. And there
is no other way.

140.
Once you understand that other people in opposition, other people
opposing you are feeding you.

They
are your din-din every time they damn-damn you; every time they judge
you; every time they state anything about you at all, (70.00)
they are doing you a favour. They are working for you. You should be
paying them in hard cash, really.

141.
And if you know that fact, and you realise that you are not paying
them to criticise you, they are doing it free. So then you should be
very, very grateful to them, and this gratitude going out embraces
them, and says do not go away my dear critics, you are feeding my
life.

142.
Now as soon as you can do this in internal feeling, the whole
quality of the relation changes. The enemy does not know what to do
with you. You are not taking it rightly, you are not sufficiently
disturbed, not perturbed enough. Why aren’t you? There is
something wrong. Now this does a favour to the enemy, it makes the
enemy reconsider the nature of the stimulus that he has sent out. And
after all we don’t want the same stimulus sending out all the
time, because that would not develop us. We want a new one and we can
provoke a new one by taking the one that we have got in the
appropriate manner. (71.00)
… …